Hatch expects Finance to take up Highway Trust Fund on Thursday — House to vote to make bonus depreciation permanent

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HATCH EXPECTS FINANCE TO TAKE UP HIGHWAY TRUST FUND ON THURSDAY. It’s looking likely that the Senate Finance Committee will take up legislation on Thursday to fix a budget hole in the Highway Trust Fund. Our Brian Faler reports that Sen. Orrin Hatch told reporters yesterday that “the chairman is moving ahead,” and Chairman Rob Wyden promised he’d have “more to say, certainly” this morning on what’s next. As you may recall, Wyden delayed a vote on an initial draft of the legislation right before the July 4 recess, with Republicans complaining it didn’t include any spending cuts. Hatch said he isn’t aware of any spending cuts that have been added to the funding plan, and said he didn’t know if he’d back it.

A patch — and then a lame duck fix? Sen. Ben Cardin said senators will try to pass a patch for the HTF that finances it through the midterm elections, and after that they’ll take up a longer-lasting measure, our POLITICOPro transportation colleague Kevin Robillard reports. “I think we're better off doing a shorter-term patch because it gives more confidence that we'll really deal with a long-term reauthorization,” Cardin told reporters. “…It's going to be very short term because we're serious about getting a bill done in this Congress. It might not be until late. ... If we do a [patch] until next spring, it's a new Congress and we've got to start all over.”

And business leaders are set to ramp up the pressure on the Hill this week, The New York Times reports. “With both the legislative calendar and the Highway Trust Fund nearly exhausted, a broad coalition of business groups and labor unions will push this week to shake Congress from its stasis and approve federal infrastructure spending before transportation projects begin to dry up in August. … Ned Monroe, the National Association of Manufacturers senior vice president for external relations, said business groups like his, the Building America’s Future coalition, and labor unions will begin a multipronged advocacy effort this week.” http://nyti.ms/1ofe4i8

COMPANIES THAT ‘MOVE’ OFFSHORE STILL SCORE BIG WITH FEDERAL CONTRACTS. Bloomberg has the story: “Ingersoll-Rand is one of more than a dozen large U.S. companies that have shifted their tax addresses offshore yet still earn federal business, a Bloomberg News investigation has found. In all, these companies are collecting more than $1 billion a year from the government, even as their tax-avoidance techniques have deprived the Treasury of untold billions of dollars in revenue.” http://bloom.bg/1qQjB4Z

THIS WEEK: HOUSE TO VOTE TO MAKE BONUS DEPRECIATION PERMANENT. Our Kelsey Snell reports that the House “will vote later this week on legislation to permanently extend a lucrative tax benefit that allows companies to write off investments more quickly, according to several aides. The House Rules Committee is expected to consider the rule for a bill to reinstate and extend the expired bonus depreciation provision on Wednesday. That could pave the way for a final vote on Friday.”

HAPPY TUESDAY! If you want to talk taxes, you can find me at mweinger@politico.com or on Twitter at @mweinger. As always, please follow @POLITICOPro and @Morning_Tax.

HOUSE: Meets at 12 p.m.

SENATE: Convenes at 10 a.m.

FIRST LOOK: 13 ORGS CALL ON CONGRESS TO WORK ON CORPORATE TAX REFORM, AVOID SHORT-TERM FIXES. The groups — including the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, Americans for Tax Reform and Americans for Prosperity, among others — write in a letter that will be sent to the leadership of the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees today that they want to “strongly caution against the urge to take action on short-term fixes aimed at individual symptoms, rather than the entirety of the tax code. We are specifically concerned about proposals that seek to make changes to our tax laws as a means to pay for projects that are totally unrelated to tax reform. Attempts like these are a step in the wrong direction. Their passage will do nothing to help America’s job creators. In fact, it will make it even more difficult to achieve true tax reform.”

ENZI TACKS ON MFA TO HTF. The amendments are rolling in for the Highway Trust Fund bill brewing in the Senate — and Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wy.) has added the Marketplace Fairness Act to the list. Enzi's aides confirm his amendment is the same bill that already passed the Senate last year. That bill has been stuck in limbo in the House as Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) works on drafting his own version of the online sales tax legislation. Wyden isn't likely to line up to back the amendment — he voted against MFA when it was up for consideration last year and has been an extremely vocal opponent of the bill.

GAO: IRS MISLEADING TAXPAYERS IN CORRESPONDENCE AUDITS. The IRS has “misled” taxpayers in audit notices by providing "unrealistic" time frames on when it would respond to correspondence, a new report issued by the Government Accountability Office found. The GAO says that until recently, the notices sent during so-called correspondence audits told taxpayers the IRS would respond to them within 30 to 45 days — even though the agency “has consistently been taking several months to respond to taxpayer correspondence.” And data shows that the agency had not responded in a timely manner to more than 50 percent of the correspondence. The IRS told GAO it plans to take action on all nine of the recommendations detailed in the report, and said despite its budgetary challenges "we have been working to improve this program."

SWISS BANKS THREATEN TO FREEZE U.S. ACCOUNTS. FT reports, “Several Swiss banks have threatened to freeze American clients’ accounts unless they prove they are, or take steps to become, tax compliant, as the country’s lenders hurry to resolve a tax evasion dispute with the U.S. The moves — made by a number of banks, according to three people familiar with the situation who did not disclose the identity of the banks involved — come before a deadline at the end of July for banks in a programme set up by the U.S. Department of Justice last year to show which American clients conform to U.S. tax requirements.” http://on.ft.com/1vUsI2q

CTJ REPORT ON TAX POLICY OPTIONS TO RAISE REVENUE. Citizens for Tax Justice will release a new report this morning on “Addressing the Need for More Federal Revenue.” The paper states: “America is undertaxed, and the result is underfunding of public investments that would improve our economy and the overall welfare of Americans. Fortunately, Congress has several straightforward policy options to raise revenue, mostly by closing or limiting loopholes and special subsidies imbedded in the tax code that benefit wealthy individuals and profitable businesses.” Read the full report here: http://bit.ly/1tgXM0b

FIRST LOOK: AMERICAN ACTION FORUM DEBUTS NEW INVERSIONS CLIP. The American Action Forum has a new video out today focused on inversions, featuring president Douglas Holtz-Eakin saying “it’s time to modernize the tax code, stop the inversions and stop losing the jobs.” The clip is part of AAF’s #Eakinomics video series: http://bit.ly/1lO9tSo

NEW CRS DATA ON CORPORATE INVERSIONS: 47 IN THE LAST DECADE. Ways and Means Committee Democrats sent out a release — and made a little graphic — yesterday about corporate inversions, featuring new data compiled by the Congressional Research Service. According to CRS, there have been 47 corporate inversions in the last decade, which is “far more than during the previous 20 years combined,” the release noted. Here’s the timeline of all 76 inversions since 1983: http://1.usa.gov/1n8ghiZ // And the graphic: http://1.usa.gov/1tglIkh

THE NEXT INVERSION TARGET? Bloomberg reports, “Qiagen NV investors are betting the busiest year for health-care deals in more than a decade will lure acquirers to one of the industry’s most expensive targets. … While Qiagen now trades at one of the highest profit multiples for life-science equipment companies, Bryan, Garnier & Co. said its Dutch domicile could make it the next tax-inversion target, with potential buyers including Sigma-Aldrich Corp. and Illumina Inc.” http://bloom.bg/1kypLz6